But I have been taken advantage of by people enough times that I want to know that I have the option of protecting my rights against large corporations and exploitative dishonest people.

If you weaken individual protection and you’ll strengthen the large organisations.

We have a completely different law in Germany. It is not even called copyright it is called creatorright. It gives me power to demand things from TV stations and everything else.

The weak American copyright system is being used as an argument to make things worse than they are everywhere else.

I don’t agree with the big media companies, but I do firmly believe that we as individual creators desperately need protection and a way to enforce our rights.

Just 6 days ago someone used my music in a way that was not agreed upon. All they had to do was include my name in the credits. No money, no restriction whatsoever except that one and they didn’t even do that. These kinds of specious people need to vanish from the culture industry and that is why we need a strong creator right.

You’ve probably come across this video of Joshua Bell busking in the Washington subway during rush hour.

To me, this video and article shows several things: first of all, people just don’t recognize greatness even if it is in front of them in the size of a mountain. But second, and this I find even more important, here is a chance to enjoy something for free, no strings attached at a level of performance that is unrivaled in the world. And yet, no one stops to listen.

Here’s my thought: what about all those people claiming that every artist should put out his/her work for free as it helps to get exposure and exposure and reaching people is what matters? It seems to me that if something is free, won’t even stop to take a closer look. So free seems to equate “not interesting enough to check out”.

Now on the other hand, if there is something with a value attached to it, suddenly the argument is: no, no, no, no, I can’t possibly be expected to pay for something. I’ll just grab it from my friend and be done with it. Does anyone else see the terribly destructive hypocrisy in this?

So please, all you people out there who claim to wanting to help creators by forcing them to just give away their work for free: think again. And for yourself this time without the “screaming free industry” (I’m looking at you, Lawrence Lessig) yelling in your ear about how modern that attitude supposedly is.

Tonight I had the dream about something, that would solve the problems of both the content industry and the free speech movement.

It would add so much entertainment value to the internet if people instead of posting the actual songs/pictures/films/books/comics that they like would just sing the the songs, draw the pictures themselves, reenact the films or write a summary of the book themselves and then link back to the creators website (or some store like Amazon or iTunes, earning referral money in the process btw.) to get to the full version.

So let me demonstrate:

If I thought that it would be clever to reference the Sex Pistols “God Save The Queen” (from memory which makes it even more fun, because it’s probably way off) in the context of a bee hive I could be posting it like this:

Citizens of the world, it is time to save the Queen Bee, so let’s get up and sing our world anthem “God Save The Queen”

That way everyone is happy and we would have additional value.

I wish that the internet community would start separating the privacy concerns and free speech concerns from the content creators, big or small, and instead focus on what is actually important: political censorship and freedom. Distributing someones content without that persons consent has nothing to do with free speech. Nothing.

Respecting of intellectual property is a social and civil contract that’s in the best interest of both the creator and consumer.

In which universe is free speech and websites where you can download unauthorized content the same thing?

People: your effort to protect free speech and civil rights are being hijacked by the free loading industry (the Googles, YouTubes and the indsutry that sells bandwidth!) and you don’t even realize it!

I’m glad that after 10 years of just one canon online (digital content can’t be contained and thus shouldn’t be compensated) the arguments and also the real money making mechanisms (selling eyeballs and user data to advertisers) are finally sinking into the public discussion.